England ended Fiji’s crowd-pleasing run at the Rugby World Cup with a tense 30-24 win to reach the semifinals for the sixth time on Sunday.
In a welcome result for the northern hemisphere after quarterfinal losses for Ireland and Wales on Saturday, the English countered a second-half fightback by the Flying Fijians as captain Owen Farrell kicked a drop goal and a penalty in the final eight minutes in Marseille.
England will play either host France or defending champion South Africa in the semifinals next weekend.
Trailing 21-10 at halftime, Fiji turned on its attacking flair and crossed for tries through prop Peni Ravai and flyhalf Vilimoni Botitu to tie the scores at 24-24 after 68 minutes.
The Pacific Island nation couldn’t complete the comeback in its bid to become the first tier two team to get to the semifinals since the game went professional after the 1995 World Cup.
As for England’s players, they were largely written off six weeks ago after losing to Fiji — for the first time — at Twickenham in a World Cup warmup match.
Now, they have taken advantage of a kind draw to reach the last four without having played any team in the top five of the world ranking. They will be the underdogs in their semifinal in Paris on Saturday but that might yet work in their favor, with expectations set to be low — outside the squad at least.
Fiji’s late rally at least meant the darlings of the tournament didn’t exit with a whimper and their campaign, featuring an unfortunate loss to Wales and a storied win over Australia, will still be celebrated back home by the rugby-mad fans, who had to get up in the small hours of the morning to watch the game.
The Fijians paid the price for a slow start that saw England centers Manu Tuilagi and Joe Marchant score tries in the opening 23 minutes, Fiji winger Vinaya Habosi get a sin-binning for head-on-head contact, and England surprisingly dominate the breakdown.
Fiji’s huge open-play threat came only in the final half-hour and it thrilled the crowd at Stade Velodrome, where Argentina beat Wales on Saturday.
And like in New Zealand’s titanic win over Ireland a few hours later, there was late drama as Fiji went through the phases with the clock in the red. They were going backward when Farrell, who kicked 20 points, was penalized for a deliberate knock-on in center-field.
He avoided a yellow card and Saracens teammate Maro Itoje produced the match-clinching turnover in the sixth minute of added-on time.
Source: The Associated Press
--Agencies
